Around The Mountain
by TheNewBrawler
Summary: "When she coughs up sand, she knows it's going to be the end, sooner or later." - Michelle, Julia, Armor King and a old friend's memory. The run up to the Tag Tournament.


_TT2 is on, peoples. This is a little warm up fic. Time to shake the rust, so to say. _

_Disclaimer – I own nothing._

_Warnings – Implied femslash. Slightly AU and set in vague TT2!verse._

_._

_Round the Mountain_

_._

_._

She was born in harsh deserts licked with fire and trekked her childhood across tangled, fierce forest wilderness. Her father had shown her the unforgiving crutch of the mountain and warned her in scaling its jagged lines. She had hunted across ground strewn with the blood of her kills since she was a mere babe. She'd grown up strong, sewing wickerwork into the tatty seams of torn shorts to hold it together and draping buffalo skins around her shins in the winter.

Ma says her home is everything. It is her, Ma insists, locked into her heritage and mind and spirit. The Arizonian sun sets in sulfur skies and Michelle knows, yes, she is _home_.

She wonders what Jun Kazama thinks of her home, of her. Her friend is the delicate sort, if not more practical, and whenever she wears dresses they reach below her knees and her hair is cropped short just above her shoulders. If Michelle had to compare her to an animal, it would be a dewy eyed doe, far too Bambi for the jaws of the wild coyotes. The image makes her grin and Jun straightens up, peeking at Michelle from under the brim of her comically large hat. They're in her mother's hut sharing homemade lemonade, for Jun had become dizzy with the heat. The white skin on her shoulders is blossoming into an angry red.

Michelle shakes her head, even if her own eyes are warm with concern and she heads to the medicine cabinet for the cooling oils.

"You know…" Jun wiggles further into the shade; her eyes are bleary from squinting. "I thought they called it sunblock for a reason."

Michelle chuckles. Her own skin is the colour and consistency of cowhide.

"The sun gets into everything here," Her hands are moist with oil. She wags her finger at Jun. "And everyone."

"So you warned me."

"I can't convince civilians."

Jun furrows her brow, placing her hand on her chin.

"You do realise I grew up in the mountains..."

"I grew up in a desert." She presses her hand up against the burn. Gentler then she usually does it, but Jun winces all the same. "You're still a civilian to me."

"Uh huh." Jun faces the window; tinkers her glass between her teeth. Michelle focuses on the groves worn into Jun's wrists, her knuckles rough and raw from battle. She nibbles her lower lip as her fingers move across her friend's back. "This place. It's…"

"Harsh? Rough?" Michelle's lip quivers upward. "Unlivable?"

"No. Different. I think I like it."

"Hm?"

"I'd like to come again."

.

.

She wonders at first if he is going to get through the door.

She had seen her Julia and the man mountain from across the prairie, silhouetted against the fiery doziness of late afternoon. She had been convinced Julia had been leading home the sick old buffalo that needed culling, but it wasn't long before she realised that said buffalo had arms and legs and a warm, charismatic voice that rang out across the fields.

What really has stopped her short though was something she hadn't heard in a while. Straight laced Julia was _laughing. _Low, sweet, contagious laughter, trying to stifle it behind her hand and Michelle groans as she heats up the stove. Brains and beauty her daughter has in spades, much more than she ever had at that age, being the plain and scrappy scruff she'd been, and well, was.

_But Jules, _she thinks to herself as she douses the frying pan with oil. _You might as well forget all your fancy pants university boys. If he makes you laugh, then you're as good as gone, love._

"Mom!" She's halfway through the door now, plaits coming undone and cheeks flushed for reasons she possibly even aware of yet. "Mom" finds herself gathered up in a bone crushing hug. Lo and behold, Michelle feels her lip beginning to tremble and she hides it quickly by gently nudging Julia away as she turns to flip the burgers.

"And what time do you call this?" She brushes down her apron, spying a growing shadow behind her daughter. "Dinner is just about to come off the stove."

"Sorry about the wait, Ms. C," The man steps inside, ducking below the low hung doorframe, and greets her with a toothy smile. He's blue eyed and golden haired, fine featured beneath the folds of his mighty neck and he carries himself with an effortless, friendly cool. "My bad jokes were slowing the feet, so to speak."

"I can imagine," Michelle attempts to stare down this hulk, offering him her hand. "You must be Bob."

"Mom, its Robert."

"_Robert, _is it?" Her gaze slides to her daughter, who is now idly fidgeting with her skirt. She grins. "Julia has told me _so_ much about you, Robert."

Bob pauses at this revelation, and he scratches the back of his head, fighting the beginnings of a smile. It's a falsely hesitant gesture, and Michelle cocks an eyebrow.

"Really? All good stuff, I hope."

Julia looks up, only to find her mother and her friend sharing mirrored grins.

"Hey, you guys are rough!"

.

.

Long, dead, droning days.

She hears them out back. He's tough with Julia, tougher then she'd ever been, and a few times her fingers have curled around the beaten up old ladle she's using to stir the soup when his voice plunges into a warning growl.

Ruthlessly he's tugging loose all of the techniques and finely honed love Michelle ever taught her daughter in terms of her fighting style. This new discipline is slicker, stuffier, and one that is tailored for the benefits of yowling mobs as opposed to the protection of the land Julia claims to love so much. Hadn't she told Julia there is no freedom in aiming to please others?

"Your stance is wrong," Behind the furry confines of the mask, his teeth are gritted. She imagines all the sweat and closed off air pressing mercilessly down on his face. "I've told you. Movement at all times is _essential…"_

"My foot is on your ass is gonna be essential soon," Michelle mutters, clanging the spoon on the side as a signal for lunch. The voices die down, but there is no sound of footsteps, and Michelle frowns; leans forward toward the window, and listens.

He's speaking to her now, a little gentler, and Julia is responding as she always does in her level headed way, but her voice is a little thicker than usual and Michelle burns herself for she grapples the end of the ladle that is submerged in bubbling soup.

.

.

The tiny shower she has plopped in the corner works via a foot operated pump at its base. You have to fill the small tank with water she never bothers to heat, for the sun is always fresh and furious in the summer and the icy bursts of moisture is more than enough refreshment. Back in her prime years she'd used it before and after her long bouts of training, when her hatred for the Mishima was just as burning and bright as the sun. And she'd shared it with Jun when she'd come to stay; observing the pale swell of the other woman's breasts below the curve of her eyelashes when she thought Jun wasn't looking.

She'd imagined Jun's voice that morning as she tirelessly worked the pump with the turn of her heel. Gentle, a little tired, teasingly needling.

_Typical Michelle. You never change, do you? Twenty years doesn't dull the spark._

"Give me another four decades, and we'll see," she mouths to herself, working dime shampoo into the roots of her hair. Water drips from her heavy breasts, down the curve of her stomach and the fading muscle on her legs. He sits up right in the bed, sheet pulled up to his waist. The sunlight is dozy, agitated with creeping warmth, and falls across his bare chest in golden slashes. Michelle senses his eyes on her, and her lips lift into a smirk that feels well-worn.

She cuts off the shower and pulls on an old t-shirt and shorts. She towels her hair dry and opens the fridge door.

"You hungry?"

"Yeah."

"Bacon, right? You wrestlers have a thing for protein."

The old Armor King had shifted on the bed when she had first offered years ago; seeming to brighten and she'd cracked a joke about the base necessities of men; sex and food. But this one, this man, remains immobile and instead nods his head slowly. He'd worn his mask through it all. Michelle hadn't complained. She'd never thought much about kissing, and she never got to kiss the people she wanted to anyway.

As she cracks out the saucepans, the bed creaks and she expects the shower to spring to life again. But then his arms encircle her shoulders and she feels a face; an actual face, with hard risen features and when a surprisingly soft mouth presses on the joint where her shoulder and neck meet, she lets the saucepan clatter in the sink.

There is dampness on the arch of his cheek, where his stubble is rough and harsh on her skin. He breathes, weighted and warm and odd choked noises collide in the spaces in his throat.

Michelle remains where she stands.

When Julia returns later that morning, the masked man continues her training.

.

.

Reading the paper is for suits. The rush of her land and the stampede of the buffalo is all the enlightenment she needs, thanks. But Julia is different. Julia has always been different. She consumes all the press and academic journals and glossy magazines in that same studied fever in which she views the world. Julia sees the vast green and blue globe as an endless possibility of discovery. Michelle sees it, has always seen it, as a dusty wasteland that creeps further in as the years trudge on. When she coughs up sand, she knows it's going to be the end, sooner or later.

But Julia is out with Bob on some whirlwind adventure she tires of hearing about and the tiny television projects nothing but DeForest Kelley westerns, so she slinks to the table and idly spies the front page of yesterday's newspaper. She knows the second name straightaway, and she knows the first name too, for Jun was kind enough to tell her through one of her long distance calls and in the letters she keeps locked under her bunk. But she'd never really seen the kid, and Jun had only sent her baby photos for nobody, not even Mishima, would look twice at a generic baby face.

But _she's _there, hidden in the arch of his nose and the shadow that parts between his bee stung mouth and in the wild bangs that falls in front of her and his chocolate sloe eyes. On Jun they were pretty and gentle. On him they are fiercely locked; secretive and self-contained as if he's trammeled some mad creature behind the gloss of his irises.

When she was a kid she'd seen a coyote go after a neighbor's dog. Before the blood and fur and frenzied shrieking the creature had been still, calm, slinking toward it within the hordes of long grass and Michelle had seen it but shock had made her powerless and she didn't cry out. Jun's boy has that same effect. He has that awful calm before water breaks the dam and everyone drowns.

Michelle shuts the windows and blocks out the late afternoon sun. It shields itself behind the compress of humid, heavy cloud and for once she's grateful for the darkness comes quicker. She lies on the bed, her fingers fumbling with her belt buckle and she does let herself wonder about the picture on the side. She hasn't got the gall though, not the energy and she wouldn't be thinking about him anyway and his disgustingly beautiful face.

Years back she'd shared a bed with Jun beneath the roof of this old shack and they exhausted themselves by talking late into the night. Jun had finally gone to sleep, face in her arms as usual; the barrette she'd always forgot to remove tangling in her hair. Her skin was smooth and soft and milky and breath had eased itself through her parted lips in delicate whistles. Michelle had wondered then about the sweet salt of her sweat as they sparred and what the inside of her mouth would taste like against the aggressive assaults of her tongue and suddenly the memory burns warm and unspoken blood in her cheeks.

She gets up. Goes outside, down to the small shed she built as a miniature training ground for herself, and then for Julia. She struggles herself into a fighting stance and begins to train.

.

.

.

God knows what she's training for, but it's for something. It's coming round the mountain when it comes, as Mama used to sing, and hell bent she's ready for it. It's good for her anyhow, she justifies; motherhood can make one too soft and domesticated and god she hasn't got time for that and how old is she now, anyway?

Julia is still sweating and swearing and striving under the foot of the wrestler. She's improving though, bit and bit, and Michelle sidles up to her as she packs her things to have a few trial runs in the city.

"_That's_ your outfit?"

Julia grimaces and stuffs the feathery pink fabric back into her bag.

"Uh…yes?"

"You're joking, right?" Michelle's strike is faster than a starving rattlesnake, and she pulls the outfit free. She knits her eyebrows together in mock fury. "Did _he_ choose this, pre-tell?"

"It's just a show outfit…"

"Showgirl outfit, more like," Michelle quips, but she shrugs and smiles and relents. "I mean, it's not even a costume. It's more like a strip of fabric."

"But _Mom…"_

"I know, I know," Michelle sighs, perching herself uninvited on the edge of the bed. As Julia bustles about, Michelle focuses her attention on the photos strewn on across the duvet. She knows the faces of some of these fighters, but the one she wants to see is missing and she doesn't know why she looks because it's hopeless, but she does it anyway. She picks up a certain photograph and grinning, taps it with her index finger.

"Who's this?"

Julia pulls her head out of her drawer.

"Oh, that's…"

"Oh, I know." The red hair and goggles is a dead giveaway. Alongside the expression of a boy who thinks the world owes him something. "How-wrong, right?"

"H_woa_rang," Julia mouths every vowel, and damn, Michelle is sure she's had elocution lessons and not told her about it. Like the computer engineering when she was sixteen. "He's one of the contestants at the tournament."

"Oh yeah, Baek Doo San's pupil," Michelle mumbles to herself. She traces the face with her fingertip and shakes her head. She recalls the brunt of blood in her mouth as a polished shoe caved in her cheek. "He dresses like a gimp."

It's a weak joke, crap really, but Julia is too fettered by fear and frustration to respond to a jibe about her old crush. And it was one Michelle never really got anyway. She sometimes thinks she makes these things up in her mind, as if it makes her daughter more normal. Or god, even human.

Julia is finally packed and rearing to go. Michelle carries her daughter's case to the boot of their beaten up old Landover and checks that the wheels are puffed enough for their journey in the morning. Theirs, not hers. She's shocked that she doesn't need to chide the armored man to keep his hands off Julia's honor, but he is more stoic and mentor like then she could have ever imagined. And in Julia's case, that is at least a good thing.

As she shuts the boot for the final time, a shadow falls on her back and it's him. He's in his full outfit, chest plates and leather trousers and brick breaker boots, impervious to the hot, sticky evening. The one red eye sparks in the gathering moonlight.

"Ready to go, eh?" Michelle wipes her oily hands on her jeans. Her palms are sweaty. "I don't know how you can wear all that without chaffing."

"Are you not going aswell?" Even his voice is a heavy, rumbling purr. A tint of an accent somewhere, but Michelle can't be bothered to define it.

"No." She idly scratches an imaginary stain off the car. He takes another step closer. "She's a big girl now. And I trust you to bring her back in one piece."

Fingers close around her hip. He draws his head down, down, to the rise of her collarbone and he breathes in and out against her skin.

"Julia sleeps upstairs," Michelle looks past his shoulder, past the house and onto the inky grip of the horizon. "She'll hear."

He doesn't move, but the mask shudders with each needy sigh and Michelle grits her teeth.

She drags him around the house, down to the tiny training shed with its makeshift bed and medicine cabinet. The light in the top window is off and Michelle mumbles a thankful prayer as she closes the door behind them. The planking is loose in here; it's drafty and cobwebbed and she really needs to crank it up with some paint. His drawstring bag is by the opposite wall and a few beer cans have been stuffed in the waste bin.

"You were sleeping in here?"

Armor King sits on the bed. He hangs his head low and shrugs.

"I could have put you up," she continues, but he remains unresponsive and as Michelle goes to leave, she decides to give him what he wants. "You know, he was a good guy."

His head snaps up, as if she has struck him. Michelle pulls a towel off the rack, leans up against the door and wipes her hands. She doesn't smile, but her eyes are soft.

"He was a bit of an ass when it came to changing channels," She puts the towel back, and frowns as she notes the rack has nails hanging loose. Getting down on one knee, she hoists it between her hands and tries to fit it back on. "It was always the god damn WWE. Morning, noon and night. And he would always raid the fridge and eat all my bacon and drink the beer. So many beer cans. We could have opened up our own recycling factory, I shit you not. And he was awkward with kids. But he would hold Jules when I had to travel the hundred miles to the nearest DIY store. Every time I came back, that baby was asleep. I thought it was a damn miracle. Like he had a Midas touch when it came to screaming brats. Little did I know he would spike her bottle with a touch of whiskey. God damn Dad of the year."

The nail slides in with a sharp chink. She grins in triumph, and with her fore finger and thumb she tries to turn it in as far as she can.

"But he was nice, you know? He held me right, we had a laugh, we even trained a bit and he would hold back as we fought and I knew he was. I found it a bit hard to hit him anyway. He bought me some nappies and feeding bottles when I had no money because no one pays a hunter outright, you know, and the buffalo meat was rancid because the creatures had got sick with some disease. But it was for about two months, tops. He had to go back training with King and I had Julia."

Michelle rattles the rack. It remains secure, at least for now, and that'll do as far as she's concerned. She exhales as she rises to her feet. There is silence behind her but that's hardly surprising. _He_ would have been quiet aswell.

"That's life, I guess," She throws the towel over her shoulder. Sweat and oil stained; it was one for the wash. "And I was sorry when I found out he was sick. And I was sorry when that idiotic punk got lucky in that brawl. And I'm sorry." She hesitates as she turns back to him. He stares at her. Right at her. "And I am. I'm sorry."

The silence that settles there, between them, is the silence she trapped inside as a white figure waved at her from a ship vanishing into sea mists, the same silence that echoed in her head as she pulled a mewling bundle free from dusty ruins, and the silence of the house as _his_ retreating form was eaten up by the golden rush of the early morning sun.

As she treks back across the yard, she sneaks a glance backwards. He's moving inside the hut, mask off and black hair a veil over his face. The mighty domes of his shoulders quake with the power of landslides.

The next day, she sees Julia off and hugs her a little tighter than usual. Armor King slugs himself around, shrugs at them both, and finally gets the newly titled Jaycee in the car. Michelle waves furiously from the window until the Landover is a dot in the distance. Huffing, she sweeps the sweat off her temples with the back of her hand. Today looks like another scorcher.

As she opens the fridge, she freezes.

On the bottom shelf there is two large boxes of beer. Next to it are a couple of packs of back bacon.

She stares at the shelf until her eyes prickle. She breaks out a small, hysterical gaff of laughter, before she covers her mouth and the tears come.

.

.

Something is coming round the mountain.

She pretends to ignore the tournament sheet when she sees it, even if her gut rankles at the sight and she fights the training dummy until the stuffing is loose and the stitching frayed and half wrecked. She imagines Paul to be retired by now but she googles his name on Julia's old slow laptop and sees he is still in competition, still top of his game. The nights are becoming darker, cooler, longer. The desert is a flat, dusky disc of nothing and the sky is black and starless and Michelle recalls that time only a few years ago; where rumors of disappearing martial artists racked the newspapers and the old stories of vengeful fighting gods storming down from the heavens lived in her head as strongly as they had done in childhood. And of course, the final call from Jun. And then nothing.

She'd dialed a couple of times after. The beeps of a dead line rang in her ears even after she finally gave up.

It's not an ordinary tournament.

It's a _tag_ tournament.

Michelle wants the heat, the sweat, the sun back. She can deal with the mosquitos and the warm swill of a baked beer can and the _whirrrr _of Julia's fan.

She finally gets in their spare car; a beetle, not really fit for the undergrowth, but she has to go somewhere and even if there were chains of serial killers on the highways she still would leave. But she isn't heading that way, toward concrete and sky scrapers and Julia. Michelle heads towards the greenery, the forest, where Julia fell in love with the land and where she fell in love with her best friend.

After the ugly business with Ogre, she'd come here and thrown the trouble making pendant as far as her best left swing could go. The lake is composed in its reflection of the murky sky, and the air from the surrounding mountains is fresh and chilly. Michelle just hopes that piece of useless metal is rusting nicely.

She sits down on the bank and dozes.

When she wakes, the sky is bleached a watery yellow and a mist settles on the river. There is a silence stretched far by the spaces between her and home.

The beetle is waiting in the glade in all its peeling, sandy glory and she must be going senile or something because traipsing out here in the middle of the night is just inviting in pneumonia. Michelle snorts as she yanks the door open. At least the air has cleared her head, and the world looks just so again.

That's when she sees it.

She was never big on forest wildlife; she knew the snakes and coyotes and buffalo of her sand drenched county, yeah, for that was her default habitat. It was Julia that loved the dampness of the undergrowth, the life cycles of the animals and the different kinds of bark and all that artsy nonsense, but she reckons even her daughter couldn't explain this.

It's a purple flash between the trees. At first, she thinks it's in her head, but then the wolf slinks down to the opening of the path that leads to the lake and Michelle has never seen a dog that big. Its eyes are a dim, lantern yellow, its body muscled and fife with fur the colour of bleeding violets. When it pants its tongue is long and thick and brick red.

She considers, for a moment, reaching into the back and getting the rifle. Its hide is oddly pretty in an unsettling sort of way, but Julia would possibly hark on at her for killing some kind of endangered species she can't pronounce. Michelle shrugs it off and revs up the spluttering engine.

When she arrives home, she showers and cooks up some soup. There is an old western on and she half watches it over the steam of the stove. The static fuelled glow of the television reflects off the glossy print of the tournament flyer. She half crumples it with her fist, and leaves on the table beside the bin. There is washing to be done, she hasn't yet painted the shed and maybe after lunch she'll brush up on her defensive stances.

"The mountain track is a bit quiet, Ma," she says out loud. She smiles and scours the old sofa where Julia sits and does her work. She would like this old movie. Black and White greats of the fifties; Julia's guilty pleasure.

"_This place. It's…"_

Michelle halts in the middle of the living room. An echo. Fleeting and feathered yet with the potency of a screaming kettle.

"Come again?"

She hears it again. A twinkling little chuckle accommodates it this time. A smear of purple catches Michelle's eye; she jolts her head in the direction of the window. The ladle hits the soup and sinks.

"_I think I like it."_

She'd seen the sky as she had drawn up in the beetle. At first, she reckoned it to be the first grey meshing of cloud, as only October can deliver. But now, looking through the window, it seems to resemble a dusky and poisonous mauve.

The door is opening. She hadn't let down the latch. She didn't think she needed to.

"_I think I'll come again."_

It comes up on the porch, passes through the door and moves, still moving, toward Michelle.

"You don't do this to me," Michelle hisses. She brings her fists up to her face. "You don't do this to me. You don't come back to me like this. You just _don't_."

The yellow lanterns are scorching, feral, knowing. It keeps moving, and Michelle knows she must aswell.

_She'll be coming 'round the mountain, she'll be coming 'round the mountain…_

"You just don't. You can't. Not to me…"

_She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes (when she comes)…_

_When she comes…_


End file.
